Teachers need interventions to improve at-risk students' self-efficacy, which may improve their academic performance in school. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions of elementary school teachers at a Texas public middle school as to what research-based interventions they felt would improve the self-efficacy of these students. Bandura's social cognitive theory, which framed the study, indicates that self-efficacy beliefs affect the courses of action that people seek and the choices people make. Many at-risk students who experience a lack of academic success have low self-efficacy, which may affect their school performance. The research questions that guided the study focused on teachers' perceptions of whether a school-based mentoring program, counseling services, or an afterschool program would best help at-risk students improve their self-efficacy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 6 teacher participants who were purposely selected from different grade levels at the school. The data were transcribed and analyzed using hand-coding procedures to determine categories and themes from the transcripts. The findings revealed that teachers thought that a school-based mentoring program would have the most positive impact in improving the self-efficacy of at-risk students. The results prompted the development of a training program for mentors. Positive social change may result when at-risk students benefit from mentors who are properly trained on ways to meaningfully impact them.

Even with extensive literacy research, routines, and policy modifications, many elementary students are not provided with the needed tools to develop independent literacy skills. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine what independent literacy behaviors are developing in first through fourth grade students to determine whether the Daily 5 framework is developing the desired independent literacy skills in those students. Based on Vygotsky's social development theory, the Daily 5 literacy routine teaches students five essential habits to develop independent literacy abilities across various grade levels. This qualitative study's research questions were developed to examine what independent literacy behaviors have been observed by teachers and how student learning is reflected based on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. The study included nine participants comprised of teachers and parents of students at the study site. The data collected through open-ended interviews, email questionnaires, lesson plans from teachers, and documentation were then coded using Atlas.ti. Emergent themes were identified through data analysis, and the findings were validated through member checking, triangulation, and researcher reflexivity. The findings revealed that while some independent literacy behaviors are reported, additional support is still needed. The findings led to the development of a professional development project centered on literacy professional development activities that build collaboration. This study and project facilitates positive social change by defining how the Daily 5 routine is promoting independent literacy skills at the research site, which builds communities of readers and positive reading experiences that circulate within the school and home.

Middle and high school general education teachers in the school district in this bounded case study were facing challenges with meeting the needs of students who have autism in the current inclusion program. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' challenges with components of the inclusion program and serving students with autism in the general education classroom. The conceptual framework was Villa and Thousand's 5 system-level best practices for successful inclusive education. A purposeful sampling procedure was used to select 4 general education teachers who were teaching autistic students in an inclusive setting; this sample included 2 middle school level and 2 high school level teachers from 2 schools in the small rural district. The data collected through classroom observations and semi structured interviews were coded based on Villa and Thousand's best practices of leadership, redefined roles, collaboration, adult support, and promotion as each related to inclusion of autistic students. Results were used to identify challenges teachers were facing that prevented the 5 system-level best practices from being implemented. Key challenges were collaboration between general and special education teachers and lack of professional development for all teachers on inclusion. Findings were used to provide recommendations for how to address challenges in middle and high school inclusion programs and for conducting future studies in different settings. The results of this study could be used by school leaders and other stakeholders to make informed decisions about system level implementation of inclusion program components and for enhancing the learning of students who have autism in the inclusive setting.

This project used data from the School Readiness Survey (SR) of the 2007 National Household Education Surveys Program collected by the National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Science. A subsample of 1,712 to 2,622 subjects who participated in the survey was used for this project. The purpose of the study was to examine parent perceptions, behaviors, and reported child ability related to school readiness and the effect ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) had on each comparison. Variables from the existing data were matched to one of the five domains of School Readiness: Health and Physical Development, Social and Emotional Development, Approaches to Learning, Communication, and General Knowledge. Data were analyzed by means of Pearson correlations and Moderate Multiple Regression analyses. Findings revealed weak, but significant, correlations among parent perceptions, parent behaviors, and parent reported child ability in specific domains. SES and ethnicity were found to be a moderator of parent perceptions and parent behaviors. SES was also shown to affect the relationship between parent behaviors and parent reported child ability in the domains of communication and general knowledge. Several limitations are presented, including possible reasons for the significant but weak results. Findings from this study suggest much more can be learned regarding parent perceptions across ethnicity and SES and the influence it has on school readiness.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the perception of school social workers’ levels of satisfaction and ways it is impacted by one or more of the following factors: the level of decision making, workload management, professional development, collaboration, and advocacy. Specifically, this study sought to determine if school social workers are satisfied with their roles in the school system and daily practice. The 130 participants of the study were district presidents who reached out to all Georgia school social workers and members of the state’s School Social Workers Association (SSWAG) which is the state’s charter of the larger national organization—School Social Workers Association of America (SSWAA). All respondents participated in the study voluntarily. The data analysis was conducted on two levels: descriptive findings and analytical procedures. The first section presented descriptive findings associated with demographic variables, the social work practice experience, and school social work settings results. The second level of the analysis tested the hypotheses under study. This section used Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient to test the strength of the relationship between the dependent variable—overall levels of satisfaction in professional practice—and each of the independent variables: perceived level of decision making, workload management, professional development, collaboration, and advocacy. The researcher found that there was a moderately strong positive correlation between the overall levels of satisfaction with professional practice and perceived level of decision making and workload management. There was a strong positive correlation with the perceived level of professional development. The perceived level of collaboration resulted in a weak positive correlation and a moderate positive correlation was found in the perceived level of advocacy. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that all five independent variables showed a correlation with the dependent variable. These study findings may be useful not only for school social workers but also for support staff (school psychologist, counselors, etc.) and school administrators.

This non-experimental, correlational study (N = 513) examined the relationships among self-actualization, well-being, and metacognition. Need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness were also tested as mediators in the relationship between metacognition and self-actualization. A battery of paper-and-pencil self-report measures was administered to a sample of undergraduate and graduate students in a public university in South Florida. Correlational and hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modeling for mediational analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The results largely supported the hypotheses with only a few exceptions. Students who demonstrated higher level of self-actualization experienced higher well-being as well (the result of this hypothesized relationship was equivocal for parent students, n = 61). Moreover, need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness were found to be significantly and positively associated with self-actualization, providing preliminary supporting evidence for Maslow’s (1968) and Rogers’ (1951, 1961) theories of self-actualization. In addition, students with higher levels of general metacognitive competence were more likely to demonstrate higher level of need-satisfaction, non-defensiveness, self-actualization, and well-being (the result of the third hypothesized relationship was equivocal for female immigrant education students, n = 78). Further, metacognition and need-satisfaction, and metacognition and non-defensiveness shared common variance in predicting self-actualization. The relationship between metacognition and self-actualization was mediated by need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness, except for non-education students (n = 201), for whom no mediational effect was detected by non-defensiveness. In sum, the findings imply that general metacognitive competence, which can be taught as a set of skills, theoretically contributes to students’ self-actualization and well-being. This study provides support for a conceptual model of self-actualization, which introduces this phenomenon as a goal-oriented process that is essential to students’ well-being and can be attained by exercising metacognition. The discussion of the findings highlights implications of this study for theory, research, and practice as a guide for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of education and psychology.

Today’s high school students will face a host of economic problems such as the demise of the social safety net, mounting college student debt, and costly health care plans, as stated in the rationale for financial literacy provided by the Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Financial Literacy. These problems are compounded by growing income and wealth inequality and the widespread influence of neoliberal ideology. Although one of the major goals of economics education is to teach students to make reasoned economic choices in their public and private lives and provide the skills to solve personal and social economic problems, little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are addressed. Secondary economics education research has primarily focused on measuring students’ grasp of neoclassical economics while a separate body of literature provides theoretical critiques of that approach. This study responds to the gap presented by these separate camps by capturing the economics discourse of a high school economics and personal finance course in relation to the role of economic decision-making in a democracy, and the space to hold values discussions. Using case study methodology that included analysis of student and teacher interviews, classroom observations, the standards and official curriculum, lesson plans, and student-produced documents, the study provides deep, context-dependent knowledge about how the official curriculum is manifest in the classroom. Findings reveal that the role of economic decision-making and values discussions were given very little space. The discourse was heavily focused on the acceptance of the science and mastery of technical knowledge about personal finance for the dual purposes of preparing students to succeed on the W!SE Financial Literacy Certification Test and preparing students to navigate and succeed in a fixed economic reality firmly committed to neoclassical economics. The role of economic decision-making was diminished by the foregrounding of financial literacy over economics, which served as a mechanism of power to send the silent message that economic circumstances (such as wealth inequality) change through individual choices and that economic and social phenomena can be understood and addressed through the application of technical approaches.

Early adolescence is a critical time for examining academic motivation, specifically motivation to read (Hervey, 2013). In order to support self-determined motivation to read, students’ needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness must be met within the classroom context (Miller & Faircloth, 2014). Since classroom instructional practices are a key component of adolescents’ daily experiences in the classroom, research which investigates the influence of these practices on students’ self-determined motivation to read is needed. In addition, the perceptions of students and teachers regarding the degree to which classroom instructional practices meet students’ needs as well as the influence of classroom instructional practices on students’ self-determined motivation to read must be considered as the perceptions of these two groups of classroom stakeholders rarely fully converge (Delaney et al., 2014; Wang & Eccles, 2014). However, the field is lacking an established measure of both groups’ perceptions of classroom instructional practices and the degree to which they support students’ needs (i.e., competence, autonomy, relatedness) and self-determined (intrinsic) motivation to read. Therefore, this study sought to address this gap in the literature by developing and validating a measure with parallel teacher and student forms called the Language Arts Reading Practices Survey (LARPS). This measure assessed student and teacher perceptions of the degree to which classroom instructional practices in the language arts classroom support students’ needs for competence, autonomy, relatedness, and students’ self-determined motivation to read. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the validity of the student form of the LARPS, with less support for the teacher form of the measure. By assessing both student and teacher perceptions, the LARPS adds to the general understanding of specific instructional practices and how stakeholder groups view these practices regarding their ability to support students’ needs and motivation.

The primary purpose of this study was to explore representations of higher education in film. In order to achieve that objective this study consisted of a narrative analysis of the themes that emerged in films regarding higher education. This study focused on films from the 1950s to the present. The narratives that emerged from the analysis of the films were compared and contrasted to the scholarly literature regarding higher education. The analysis of the films also included juxtaposing the film narratives to the work of postmodern theorists such as Michel Foucault in order to inform the claims made by the researcher. This study focused on seven main themes regarding higher education in the cinema. The higher education themes that were examined in this study were Students, Student Services, Admissions, Race, Finance, Faculty, and Gender. Overall, this study found that higher education in the cinema is not represented as a unified monolithic system. Instead, the findings indicate that the representations of higher education and its different parts were quite varied among the films. In spite of all the differences there was one overall theme that remained constant. This study found that the cinema privileged the traditional, selective, four-year residential university as the model for a higher education institution. An analysis of the representations of students in the films found that the depictions of students in the cinema also varied greatly over time. However, this study revealed that a major discursive student theme that was constant throughout the films was a focus on the sex lives of students. The analysis of the representations of faculty members also proved to be quite varied. This study revealed that the one major discursive theme that was constant in regards to faculty was that all of the faculty members remained employed as academics regardless of the difficulties they may have faced. This dissertation also includes a discussion of the implications of the study's findings and provides suggestions for future research.

Violence in schools in various forms has become recognizable. Awareness of this situation has resulted with proliferation of curricula for conflict education. The purpose of this study was to analyze conflict resolution curricula designed for five to eight year olds. The study examined three issues formulated from the review of related literature: time and space, skill building, and developmentally appropriate practices. The findings included time and physical space requirements for conflict resolution curricula, the suggested skills needed to peacefully resolve conflicts, and an evaluation of the developmentally appropriate activities in the curricula for early childhood ages 5-8.